


draco dormiens

by Liu



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Barry is a sacrifice, Dragons, Fairy Tale Elements, Gen, Len is a dragon, M/M, Magic, Pre-Slash, Saving Each Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-26 18:44:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6251305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liu/pseuds/Liu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Iris is chosen to be sacrificed to a fearsome beast, Barry voluntarily goes in her stead. What he finds in the caves is not at all what he expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	draco dormiens

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt fill for anon on tumblr: "I'm cold. Come closer."
> 
> It really got away from me, I'm kinda sorry.

The cave is dark when Barry enters: the torch flickers and for a moment, Barry fears that it will fail him completely, but the flame steadies as he moves away from the draft at the entrance. The darkness coils and twists away from the light, as if it isn’t used to being penetrated. And it might not be: Barry doubts that a lot of people would willingly descend into the damp mouth of this cave, only to seek the certain death at the bottom of the pit.

 

He would not have come either, had it not been a simple choice: Iris or him, and he will be damned before he lets Iris give herself up for a meaningless sacrifice. It’s tradition, the town crier said when he delivered the letter – tradition and chance, and no one should mess with either of those. Joe insisted they would sort it out, demanded that Barry, not officially a West, should not bear the burden on the family. Iris protested as well, but Barry would hear none of it. Tradition demanded a virgin sacrifice to the fearsome beast sleeping at the heart of the mountain beyond the town – Barry found no word in the original legends that it had to be a _woman_.

 

It gets colder as Barry descends the uneven path, scraping his shoulders and hips against the sharp rocks protruding from the walls. He has not been underground too often: occasionally, when he was little, his father would send him for mushrooms that grew in long, narrow caves twisting along the hillsides. It makes him feel uneasy now, when he was expecting oppressive, damp heat instead of his breath freezing as it leaves his body, but he keeps making his way down, down, underneath the layers of rocks that are crushing him just with the thought of their weight, their age, their motionless observation of the atrocities that go on below them.

 

He doesn’t know how long he’s walking, but his torch is winking out by the time the path stops curving downward. His knees are a little weak from the unnatural slope and from the frosty air, his hands shaking and making the torch’s weak light dance across the rough walls. He thinks of Iris, and how this will give her a chance at a normal life: he thinks of Joe who won’t be losing a daughter tonight, but it still doesn’t make the fear go away. He pushes on, anyway, and finally, the narrow caves open to a greater space.

  
“Ugh,” Barry shudders hard as the frigid air licks at every inch of his exposed skin, bites into his wrists and knuckles and ears. “It’s freezing in here.”

 

He knows it’s crazy to talk to himself, right as he’s likely about to die: but a part of him just wants to get this over with, so if his voice attracts the fearsome beast, whatever it is, Barry won’t even mind.

  
What he does _not_ expect is another voice, decidedly unlike his own, booming and crackling and loud.

 

“That’s because _I’m_ cold. Come closer.”

  
The torch falls out of Barry’s hand and lands on a small pile of snow, but it doesn’t matter: the entire cave is illuminated from within, pale blue light that makes everything too bright and too sharp. At first, Barry thinks it’s some sort of magical crystals glowing off the walls, but then something moves and Barry gasps.

  
It’s not a sudden motion: it’s slow, deliberate and careful, but it’s _massive_ , intimidating in the sheer size. It’s like seeing the heartbeat of a mountain, a great rock pulsating with life – a boulder the size of the West house moves and unfurls into a… dragon.

 

The beast that the villagers have been allowing to murder a young woman every decade for ‘protection’ is a huge reptile, with sharp, angular scales that looked dark grey at first, but now, as the dragon moves, Barry can see that they’re a heavy, deep blue. His underbelly shimmers silvery and slick, and Barry shivers again when he looks up to meet the beast’s eyes. He expects hunger – maybe rage, because face-to-face with a creature that should not exist, the idea that the beast truly only consumes virginal girls is not as far-fetched as it seemed half an hour ago.

 

The blue orbs settle on Barry, focus, as if the dragon was sleeping and had to struggle to keep awake. They’re probably the size of Barry’s whole skull, which is an unnerving thought, but Barry’s brain seems to do that thing where it runs off on its own, thinking about things that aren’t really important in that moment. He can’t even stop it this time: it’s not like he’s going to have much time to think anyway, and he’d rather die while thinking of something fun.

 

Like the size of dragon eyeballs. Um. Okay. Maybe something else that would be fun? Anything? Barry’s brain fizzes to a frightened stop when the dragon slowly brings his head down and peeks at him curiously. The huge jaws open and Barry tries to make his dry throat work when he sees the two rows of teeth that remind him of the wooden pikes around the town. It comes to Barry how atrociously inadequate the town’s protection is: if this beast decided to attack, nobody would stand a chance.

 

The teeth get closer; Barry squeezes his eyes shut, not particularly happy about the idea of watching himself get eaten.

  
“Why have you come?”

 

Barry’s eyes snap open at the gust of frosty air – he reaches out to steady himself because his knees are all shaky and unsteady, and his skin is likely starting to turn blue.

  
“I-I’m t-the s-sacrif-fice,” he manages, through chattering teeth. The dragon tilts its head, and Barry would almost think it cute, like a dog trying to understand human speech, if only the beast wasn’t still terrifying. And so, so cold: its breath is making Barry’s eyeballs hurt as it washes over him like winter gale.

  
“They always send girls,” the dragon drawls – it has a strange voice, like crackling ice and a rumbling snowstorm, slow and deliberate and… is that amusement? No, it can’t be – a hellish creature that eats innocent people can’t have a sense of humor – can it?

 

Barry braces himself and decides that maybe the thing likes to converse before a meal. His heart’s hammering against his ribs, but he lifts his chin and tells himself to be brave anyway.

  
“The legends said you only require virgins,” he says defiantly, and has to turn his face away from the sudden puff of frigid air that nearly makes his nose fall off. Ow. Could that have been… a chuckle? A _dragon chuckle_?!

  
“And are you?” the creature asks. Barry blinks in confusion and shivers again: the dragon retreats a few feet, as if he is aware that his proximity is making Barry’s skin hurt. As if he _cares_. “I’ll let you in on a secret about the virginity – it’s nearly impossible to tell with you humans, in the end.”

  
“Since we all taste the same?” Barry raises an eyebrow, a bit offended on behalf of his species. Another huff of cold air later, Barry’s almost certain that the creature is laughing. Which still comes off rather frightening, in a beast that huge.

 

The dragon turns away, the long spiked tail swishing behind, as if it were an upset cat.

  
“They never send the smart ones, do they…”

 

“I’m a healer,” Barry frowns. “Maybe if you didn’t murder everyone who ever met you, we would know more about your… tastes.”

 

It would be a macabre thing to study, which humans would satisfy the dragon’s tastes – the beast doesn’t seem to like the idea either because it whips around, its tail slamming into the nearest wall, making the whole cave shake. Barry wonders whether there’s another exit: there is no way this huge creature could ever squeeze into the cave tunnels Barry came through.

  
“I don’t _murder_ people!” the dragon roars, its voice reverberating almost as strongly as the physical blow to the stone did. “And if you were a _good_ healer, you would realize that even if I did, eating one skinny human every ten years would hardly sustain someone my size.”

 

The dragon looks irritated, as much as a reptile can have any expressions, and Barry is momentarily taken aback by its choice of words. It is definitely intelligent enough to talk, self-aware enough to consider itself some _one_ , not some _thing_ … and it’s also right. Eating one human every _day_ would hardly be enough for this giant: so why-

 

“Why do you want sacrifices, then?” Barry frowns and realizes that he’s walking closer to the dragon, hand raised as if he were approaching a skittish horse. A large, dangerous skittish horse. “Where are the others if you haven’t eaten or killed them?”

 

It’s true that he doesn’t see any bones lying around here: which is either reassuring or terrifying, depending on whether one counts with the dragon leaving the bones alone if it ate humans, or with the ability of the dragon’s digestive system to swallow and consume a whole person, skull and all.

 

The beast huffs and puffs for a while, dancing around very much like an upset horse – it shakes the very ground Barry’s standing on, and the dragon’s breath coats the rocks around it with ice.

  
“They all run away,” the beast grumbles. It sounds sulky, and Barry should really not find it endearing – but the more the creature insists it’s not a killer, the more Barry feels sympathy for it. Being stuck in a cave all alone has to be awful; he wonders if there are no other dragons around, and quickly berates himself for even thinking that. After all, if there were many of those, more people would know they existed, instead of taking them for old wives’ tales. Not even the village elders are certain what lies below the mountains, only that it is a terrible beast that has to be fed every decade, or awful things happen.

 

But the more Barry looks at the dragon, the less he believes that somehow, it would be responsible for droughts and pig plague. Maybe a hailstorm, if it caught a cold; the thought amuses Barry so much that he snickers under his breath, and the sky-blue eyes turn to him in obvious irritation.

  
“Funny, is it? I could still crush you, even if I don’t want to eat you.”

 

“You won’t,” Barry smiles slowly. He doesn’t know where the certainty comes from, but the fear in his heart is melting away. “Why has no one returned to their families, though?”

 

The dragon shuffles on its feet and looks away, and Barry blinks. Is an enormous reptile actually being _shifty_?

  
“Spill,” he huffs, and the dragon snaps its bright eyes to him.

 

“What?”

 

“It means ‘tell me the truth’. Come on – were you lying about not eating anyone ever?”

  
“I didn’t say ‘ever’,” the dragon grumbles. It doesn’t quite put Barry at ease, but he’s capable of smirking at the pouting, at least.

  
“Last chance. Tell me what’s going on or I’m leaving too.”

  
It’s a gamble: Barry doesn’t know if the dragon needs him, but he has a feeling it does. Need, or want, or desire, one of those has to be true, and he bets on a combination of all three. For a blood-curdling moment, he thinks it won’t work, that he will have to turn around and just walk out of here – it’s unsettling to think about all the possible reasons why nobody has returned to their family before. Barry doesn’t think he would want to wander the world alone, so he stays, and waits, and eventually, the dragon shakes its massive head a little and glares at him:

  
“You better get away from the mountain when you do, kid. _Far_ away, beyond the Great Lakes, at least. Otherwise the bond won’t break.”

 

“The bond?” Barry repeats, curiosity piqued. “What bond?”

  
“The magical one that tuned in to you as soon as you entered this cave, of course – do you humans not feel magic anymore?” the dragon grunts – it seems exasperated and Barry blinks in confusion. He has heard the fairy-tales, but as a healer, who has seen how a human body looks inside, he never really believed in magic – especially not in the human ability to _sense_ it just by being near it.

  
“What does the bond do?” he frowns and takes a step closer. “Are you feeding off me?! Through the bond?”

 

That is, indeed, a worrisome thought: and a good enough reason why every other ‘sacrifice’ would have left. Barry turns to the entrance – he has no intention to let himself be eaten, body, soul, magic, or whatever it is that healers can’t find and ancient magic obviously can. A spiky end of a gigantic tail curls around to bar the entrance and Barry scowls at the dragon over his shoulder.

 

“Did you do this to the others? Refused to let them leave to feed?”

 

Even so, he can hardly find it in himself to be angry with the dragon. Feeding is survival, it’s a necessity, and if every other sacrifice has, indeed, left, then the dragon must not have fed much in the past… whoever knows how long. Barry feels a little bad for the creature, but he still doesn’t particularly love the idea of being fed on.

  
“Wait,” the dragon grumbles. Barry snorts and crosses his arms over his chest.

 

“Not like I have a choice, do I?”

 

“I don’t feed on humans – not in any sense you imagine.”

 

That certainly gets Barry’s attention. He quirks up an eyebrow and stares at the creature, arms dropping to his sides.

  
“Then what-“

  
“It’s your warmth. The bond latches onto blood, and lets me draw from your warmth. I need very little, so it doesn’t kill you – but blood means that I am linked to your family, too. That’s why the others have left – that, and… I get smaller when I warm up.”

 

Barry is now certain that the awkward curl of the scaly edges of the dragon’s mouth is a smirk. He grins back, just a little, still confused.

  
“Why would that be a problem?” he blinks. Wouldn’t it be an ideal outcome if the dragon got smaller so it wouldn’t be quite this scary?

  
“Because when I’m smaller, I can get out.”

 

Barry’s eyes widen at that: “You mean-“

 

The tail blocking his path moves out of the way, and the dragon twists awkwardly in the space that is rather tight for a beast this size. “Yes. That’s why the others didn’t stay. If they go far enough, the bond will weaken and eventually break. I won’t draw from you or your family, and I’ll stay right here.”

 

It sounds bitter, but Barry can’t blame the beast: it’s ghastly to even imagine being confined to one narrow space for… who knows how long. Well over a century, if the legends and myths are to be believed. A part of Barry wants to turn on his heel and walk away, have his own life somewhere far, far from here… but another part of him knows that he would never be able to forget that he could have helped this creature, imprisoned in a cave just because- wait. Why exactly?

  
“Is this a curse?” Barry raises an eyebrow. “Or punishment? How did you get here in the first place?”

 

The spiky tail-end flicks angrily – Barry jumps out of the way just in case it’s as dangerous as it looks. But it seems more a subconscious reaction than a deliberate effort to harm him, so he decides not to hold it against the beast.

 

“Fell asleep,” the dragon grumbles. “Got hurt, needed time to heal, so I crawled here, but it was cold and healing sleep became hibernation. I was too big to get out by the time I woke up – there was a woman in the cave, and she ran away screaming. I think I drew some warmth from her and her family, for a while, but that was when people could still feel magic, so she quickly moved away, along with all of her blood relatives.”

 

Barry blinks. The first healer – the one who defeated the beast for the first time, the one who bargained the sacrifices so the town would be protected – was actually just a woman who stumbled onto something (some _one_ )… incredible. And all she could do was run away.

 

He frowns and stares up at the dragon resolutely: “Will you hurt people if I help you get out?”

 

The dragon stares back, for a long while – so long that Barry thinks the creature will lie. It will say ‘no’ and then raze the forest, kill the livestock, scare people and kidnap children for fun. And Barry will be the one to blame for the horrors-

  
“No. Can’t say I’ve never hurt a human before, but certainly no worse than what humans can do to each other. And I don’t particularly enjoy cruelty.”

 

The rumbling voice sounds sincere enough, even though Barry’s not an expert on dragon tones. But he steps forward anyway, bravery and fear and his heart in his throat. He feels like he’s doing the right thing here – but he won’t know until he actually tries.

  
“I have no blood relatives left,” he declares. “But if one person is enough… feel free to take whatever you need.”

 

…

 

Barry is cold when he wakes up – his fingertips are a bit blue when he brings his hand up to rub at his eyes, but he doesn’t _feel_ like he’s freezing, which is strange. It’s definitely not warm, and it’s far from comfortable, the uneven stone floor of the cave digging into his hip, but he doesn’t feel particularly awful. He stretches, and then suddenly becomes aware of two things.

 

Well, three, really. Three people, having a hushed argument just a few feet from Barry’s makeshift stone bed.  
  
It says a lot about how much he probably fucked up that he’s more afraid of the two people he _recognizes_.

  
“Barry!” Iris cries, the first one to spot that he’s moving. “What were you thinking?! It wasn’t your decision to make, you idiot! You could have been seriously hurt – if it had not been for Len here, you _would_ have been!”

  
Wait… who? Barry’s brain is slow to catch on and he looks towards Joe (who is scowling at him in his worst ‘you did something I dislike and I’m not going to talk to you until you’re properly sorry about it’). And there, standing right next to Joe, is a man Barry doesn’t know. A man-

 

-with unnaturally bright blue eyes. Barry shivers. He remembers those eyes, when they were enormous and set in a rather more reptilian face. But how-

  
“I was just telling Knight West here,” the man drawls, the rumble of a snowstorm in a great distance underneath his words, “how the beast disintegrated the moment you helped me defeat it.”

 

Barry opens his mouth, and he would probably say something stupid if Iris wasn’t shaking him by the shoulders.

 

“Is it true? Leonard said it was big and black and furry- oh Barry, you could have died!”

 

She wraps herself around him in a bear hug and he pats her on the back awkwardly as he tries his best to look remorseful; but when he catches the dragon’s – Leonard’s? – eyes over Iris’ shoulder, it’s impossible not to grin back.

 

Iris finally untangles her arms from Barry’s neck and turns to face the… dragon? Newly-human dragon? Barry has so many questions it feels like his head will burst, but this is not exactly the time and place to bring attention to the fact that the only ‘beast’ in this cave is standing about ten feet from Iris, with a very human, very unnerving and… yes, very attractive smile.

  
“You really have to stay with us until you recover – I’m sure everyone in town would love to hear about how you freed us from those dreadful sacrifices.”

 

Joe doesn’t look happy about it, but Iris shoots a pointed look his way before he can even think about saying anything. “And we have to thank you for saving Barry’s life, too – please say you’ll come? At least for a few days.”

 

Leonard’s smirk widens – Barry half-expects sharp, pointy teeth, but the man-dragon looks perfectly human. Barry really can’t wait for an explanation… but right now, he’s content to watch the bright blue eyes turn to Iris.

  
“It will be my pleasure. But I have to say, Barry was the one to save _me_.”

  
“That I’d love to hear about,” Iris chuckles and then tugs Joe towards the cave’s entrance. “Let’s talk about it over hot dinner, though – this place is freezing!”

 

Barry tries to stand up, but his body feels sluggish and cold. A hand appears in his line of vision: it’s a perfectly human hand, long-fingered and fine-boned, and Barry accepts with minimal damage to his ego. After all, he did just defeat a mythical beast – if not in the way Iris and Joe think he did.

 

As soon as their palms meet, Barry feels a peculiar sensation spreading over his skin. It’s like he’s warming up and cooling down from the inside out: it’s like sipping hot tea during a long winter night, like curling up near a fire after having been out in the snow. And at the same time, it’s cool water from a mountain stream on an uncommonly hot summer day, slipping down his throat and caressing overheated skin. It’s comfortable and exciting at the same time, and it makes Barry crave that sensation with all his heart.

  
“So… Len?” he asks, voice all creaky and strange, and the man-dragon chuckles.

 

“I took a little too much too quickly when I heard your family approach. I will return some of your warmth tonight, when your family is out of sight: you won’t have to deal with ice-cold hands until the day you die, no worries.”

 

Barry frowns at the suggestion: his cold hands barely even crossed his mind, since he was too preoccupied with studying a dragon’s human form. _Is_ it even Len’s form, or can he change it? Could dragons shapeshift before- so many questions, and the only one Barry truly wants to answer is:

  
“Will you stay?”

 

Len seems to be taken aback by Barry’s words just as much as Barry is shocked for speaking them out loud. But when the slender fingers tighten around his hand, Barry knows that he has to ask, has to know: because depending on this answer, his heart could be the thing imprisoned in this cave for all eternity. It’s strange, really, to fall for a mythical beast - he used to be so large, and now he’s barely as tall as Barry. Now, with Barry’s warmth in his heart, whatever that even means.

 

Len’s eyes flicker towards the entrance and Barry can read the longing in them, the indecision. He can only imagine how it must feel for Len to know that he is so close to gaining freedom, stretching his wings without hurting himself on sharp rocks, _flying_ – and yet to wonder if he could (should) give it up, simply because a human asked.

 

And Barry knows that he has not asked the right question yet.

 

“Will you come back, one day?” he whispers, and Len turns back to him, bright blue refocusing solely on Barry. Maybe he should wonder if what he feels is not only magical residue, a bond into which he stepped blind. And yet, all he wants is to keep that bond alive, to keep holding Len’s hands in his own cold fingers, because he would know that the warmth was keeping Len near.

  
Len glances at their joined hands and chuckles, a little; Barry knows the sound will haunt him for months, perhaps years to come.

  
“In the summer, maybe. When we can both bask in the sun all day.”

 

The mental image is ridiculous – it makes them _both_ sound like overgrown lizards and Barry laughs, but when Len releases his hand and turns towards the entrance, Barry can’t help but wish the summer would come already.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on [tumblr](http://pheuthe.tumblr.com/) :)


End file.
